Pinned
"If Syed’s freedom is cause for celebration, it is also cause for shame. He was not released because the American criminal justice system is fair. He was released despite its brokenness and corruption."
My thoughts:
Lara Bazelon
6,296 posts
Lara Bazelon
@larabazelon
@usflaw prof. mama. writer. lawyer. zealous advocate, always.
I think and write about crime, justice, love, work & family.
- 1/4: In 2019, I wrote a @nytimes op-ed critical of Kamala Harris on criminal justice issues. In the last week every media outlet you can think of has asked me to "comment" on her candidacy. Here you go: Dems--all of us--need to make sure that Kamala Harris wins the presidency.
- Jury nullification is a powerful weapon against prosecutors who go after women seeking abortions and anyone who tries to help them, as well as parents seeking gender affirming care for their children. Jurors have the right to say "No, not in our name," and nullify.
- Replying to @larabazelonThere is one story. We elect someone who supports women's rights or someone who is cool w/ the Handmaid's Tale. Someone who believes in climate change or someone who will let the planet fry. Someone who believes in the peaceful transfer of power or a wanna-be oligarch. One story.
- Replying to @larabazelon3/4: I've been relieved at how few progressives are willing to take the current media bait--from left, right, and center publications--to create a "story" around Harris. There is only one story: we elect a sane, competent candidate or we get Donald Trump.
- After a string of horrifically botched executions, Oklahoma is preparing to put 25 people to death over the next two years. At least one of them, Richard Glossip, is demonstrably innocent.
- Replying to @larabazelon2/4: the media's thirst for "rounded out" a profile of Kamala Harris means they want a liberal to dunk on her. So they are digging up my 5-year-old op-ed, which I wrote when there was a crowded field of Dems running for the 2020 presidential nomination. That was a lifetime ago.
- For years, California police officers come into court & testified as “gang experts.” But many of the ppl they convicted--all black and brown--were not in a gang. It was all made up. And the scandal is only getting bigger and worse.
- The real loser in the Heard-Depp trial is @aclu, which ghostwrote Heard's @washingtonpost op-ed--without which none of this would have happened--after Heard pledged to pay @aclu $3.5M. Just so gross.
- Replying to @larabazelonJurors: if a prosecutor asks you to make a felon out of a woman seeking an abortion or someone who helps her to get one, or a mother trying to help her child get affirming care, stand up and say no. These laws may exist, but you do not have to enforce them. You have the power.
- Thread on black men, sexual assault in prison, and Title 9 claims. I have a client, a young black man in prison, who gets sexually assaulted repeatedly by a guard. The guard shoves his hand down my client's pants and gropes him. When my client says no, he gets sent to lockdown.
- I wrote about the ACLU's bizarre, cringeworthy role in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial and how the organization has lost its way in recent years.
- Replying to @larabazelonToo many jurors think they are in the box for one purpose: to convict. Especially if the facts match up with a law, however horrible the law is or how unfairly it is applied. But that's not true. Jurors have all the power. They just need to exercise it by saying no.
- Replying to @larabazelonIt just takes one juror to hang the jury. It is so, so hard to hold out. But you have to. You have to stick to your principles and hang so that a horrible injustice is not perpetuated.
